BBC To Make Deep Cuts In Internet Services

Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that the BBC has yielded to critics of its aggressive expansion, and is planning to make sweeping cuts in spending on its Web site and other digital operations. Members of the Conservative Party, which is expected to make electoral gains at the expense of the governing Labor Party, have called for the BBC to be reined in and last year James Murdoch criticized the BBC for providing 'free news' on the internet, making it 'incredibly hard for private news organizations to ask people to pay for their news.' Mark Thompson, director-general of the BBC, said 'After years of expansion of our services in the UK, we are proposing some reductions.' The BBC is proposing a 25 percent reduction in its spending on the Web, as well as the closure of several digital radio stations and a reduction in outlays on US television shows. The Broadcasting Entertainment Cinematograph and Theatre Union, which represents thousands of workers at the BBC, says that instead of appeasing critics, the proposed cuts could backfire. 'The BBC will not secure the politicians' favor with these proposals and nor will the corporation appease the commercial sector, which will see what the BBC is prepared to sacrifice and will pile on the pressure for more cuts,' says Gerry Morrissey, general secretary of the union."

Comments

Re:drop proprietary software?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense. Yet another armchair/basement nerd with no experience of how tech works in the real world. Move 35,000 employees to Open Office overnight? What about all the retraining costs? Get real.

Theora is incredibly inefficient compared to h264 encoding. The eventual transit costs (because of the bitrate increase necessary to maintain quality) would dwarf the licensing costs.

Your argument would only save money because by removing content restrictions, 80% of the content would have to disappear from the iPlayer - rendering it much less useful and popular in the first place.

OK, I read TFA

[drinkypoo]

And here is my own line of bullshit in the form of creative linking.

James Murdoch, chief executive of the European and Asian operations of News Corp., which controls the British pay television company Sky, last year accused the BBC of a "land grab."

"The scale and scope of its current activities and future ambitions is chilling," Mr. Murdoch said in a speech.

But no one cares what he said, because we're talking about News Corp here, one of the world's ten largest media conglomerates, that gets to decide what you will see and hear if you get your "news" from practically fucking anywhere.